Minds Awandering
by Viridian Carn
Summary: For as long as she could remember, she was "Jane", a lost, somewhat insane traveler who occasionally threw a particularly infuriating river rock at random signposts. This light-haired kidnapper couldn't change that, no matter how silky his hair could be.


CHAPTER ONE:

Unintended Meetings

She'd been calling herself "Jane" for as long as she'd been wandering the countryside of whatever country this was. It seemed a nice enough nice, short and familiar, for one reason or another. When she was asked – usually by travelers she ran into on her path – she told them she couldn't think of a name, so she went with the first letter of the alphabet and started from there. They usually laughed at that, and she, along with them. Some of them even kept her company for a while before they got to a fork in the road and she felt too awkward to admit that she had no idea which way to go.

The forest path she had been following brought none of those strangers, but it did branch out into two just as she saw the edge of the tree-line. With a deep sigh, she rearranged the cloak on her shoulders so she could better glare at the almost incomprehensible scrawls on the signposts. Even with a better view, the scrawls remained haphazard scratches on wood. She was stuck – but then, how could you be stuck when you had nowhere to go? It was up to a rock toss, then.

Jane – the name still sounded strange, even when she said it in her mind – reached into the inner pocket of her coat for a small, smooth river rock. She had picked it up on one of her unplanned journeys to find water. The godforsaken rock had tripped her on her way down to the riverbank. She had retaliated by taking a sharper rock and etching an arrow onto the side of the glorified pebble. Served it right to be injured by one of its own. The fall, however, had also led her to discover the shine of a golden coin in the water. Both the coin and the rock had found their home in the pockets of her cloak.

This time, however, the rock had a more important purpose: helping her decide the way. She bounced the rock in her palm and felt for its familiar weight. Once. Twice. She pulled her arm back and threw it, full force into the signpost. Just because that rock led to fortune didn't mean she was any close to forgiving it for the bruises from that fall.

It bounced off the post, towards the path on the right. Well, that was decided then. She debated whether to pick up the damned thing, before deciding that she still hadn't thrown it at enough signposts. With a resigned sigh, she picked it up and returned it to its place, weighing down her cloak pocket. She followed the rock-chosen path out of the woods.

In the distance, she could hear the chirp of some birds dying to mate and mating to death. Ah, the sound of nature – so filled with primitive lust and animal pheromones. Maybe the Cursed Rock was right. It was time to leave the forests and its endless supply of food and shelter. Stupid rock. Still, she walked on, until the trees became sparse and the path turned from full of leaves to full of grass.

The trees fell away into a wide clearing, drowning in sunlight. It was littered with large rocks that protruded from the ground like the piercings on leather armor, with bits of earth still clinging to the sides. The wind that blew through them occasionally whistled a single note that filled that air.

For the first time in years, the Fields were quiet, though how she knew that, she wasn't so sure. She didn't remember knowing a place called the Fields, or knowing how unquiet it used to be. She didn't remember a lot of things these days. Sometimes, she'd pass by a tree or go down a path, and think of it familiar; but how could anything be familiar when you barely even knew your name?

In the silence, she heard the shuffle of feet on grass behind her. She reached into her pocket. The Rock led her here – it would be the first casualty in this skirmish. She barely had her arm out before she felt someone pull her hands toward her back. The suddenness of the movement drove her to her knees. The rock fell back into her pocket.

She threw her head her head back to catch a glimpse of her captor. A flash of blue eyes. Light hair pulled back by a band of elastic. The woman must be pretty strong to have pinned both Jane's arms singlehandedly.

"Identify yourself,"

Too bad the woman had such a deep voice. Oh well, as long as her captor didn't talk, she supposed the woman drew enough male attention with that wonderfully silky hair.

"How do you keep it so nice and silky?" she found herself asking. She sighed again – she'd been doing that a lot lately – directing her attention to the sky in an attempt to see her captor more clearly.

"Excuse me?" the indignation in her captor's voice made her think of distant thunder.

"Your hair, it looks so dark and silky," she craned her neck a little bit further before she met those eyes again. Those blue eyes. That silky hair. That unmistakably male jawline. "Fate is cruel," she decided. "No man should have hair that long and silky,"

"Do you need help, Scorpius?" said another deep voice. It was all she could do to stop herself from making an undignified snort, and she could barely even do that. The new voice belonged to a middle-aged man whose hand seemed firmly planted on the sheath of the sword on his belt. He didn't look particularly alarmed that this silky-haired Scorpius had a perfectly sane woman like her pinned to the ground. Granted, she wasn't particularly sane, but still, it was the principle of the thing.

This Scorpius let out an unbelieving scoff. "She called my hair _silky_ ," he said. She could almost see the twitch in one of his eyes, probably the left one. He did look like a left-eye-twitch kind of guy.

"Probably because it is," the older man said. He removed his hand from his sword. So it wasn't completely attached after all. "Why don't you make the little lady a bit more comfortable before you force her to tell you her deepest secrets?"

Jane was about to agree when she felt Scorpius wrap her hands behind her in a bit of rope that cut tight into her skin. It was definitely going to make a mark. He pulled her upright, and with a hand on her bindings, he turned her around.

"I was right about that jawline, it _is_ male,"

His left eye twitched.


End file.
